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July 23, 2012

Women themselves want to be seen as seductive

He
was the embodiment of romance, of that joy that comes from giving oneself to
someone… But there was something in his voice and eyes that made his words go
straight to his female fans’ hearts. Much of that persona was created by his
directors like Shakti Samanta and Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Rajesh Khanna was to a
large extent a product of the Bengalis present in Bollywood at that time… It
was their sentiments and thoughts that went on to make Rajesh Khanna what he
was. Neither in Bawarchi nor in Anand was Rajesh
Khanna playing a man in love. In these two films he was playing characters who
were positive and creating happiness around them.

On
every television channel the interviewees were being asked what made Rajesh
Khanna so popular with women. The answer is very simple. The roles he played
were always of men who were deeply romantic. In his films he put his lady love
much above himself and was ready to do anything for her. He held her in such
high esteem that every woman who watched him felt loved and respected. That is
what is missing today from the screens. Women themselves want to be seen as
seductive and are totally focused on their physical appearance because that
must attract attention. In Rajesh Khanna’s films women were objects of adoration.
India
may have become wealthier than before but crimes against women are in the
headlines every other day.

Aradhana and Amar Prem were out and
out Sharmila Tagore’s films. And yet Rajesh is the one who shone so brilliantly
because he was so worthy of the woman’s love. We are crying for the death of
romance. Every woman in India
wants her man to say that he can’t bear to see her tears. That is why the words
“Pushpa, I hate tears.” have become almost an anthem. Please, can we have a
little less violence and foul language and a little more affection and
sweetness on the screens.

The
tragedy of the Aurora
massacre has now been before our eyes for a few days, piercing our hearts and
unsettling our minds as we attempt to comprehend how and why this horrible
event occurred… Sociologists, cultural theorists, and feminist scholars have written tirelessly of how our culture has become
a culture of violence—not only violence but glorified and celebrated violence
fed to our children and young people via video games, television, film, and
various cultural narratives and gender stereotypes.

Aristotle, an
ancient Greek philosopher, taught that cultivating proper habits is crucial to
one’s moral and intellectual development. According to this theory, a virtuous
person is, among other things, one who has made intentional choices and who has
engaged in purposed activities that enable him or her to both grasp (1) what it
is to be courageous, generous, temperate, and the like, and (2) to actually
live courageous, generous, and temperate lives.

But
when these categories tell us what matter is made of, do they tell us
what reality is made of? There is a certain circular sense in
which reality is indeed made of matter; that is, material reality
is made of matter. But not all reality is material. The testable phenomena of
experimental psychology – behaviours and neurons – are material, but it’s more
questionable whether subjective psychological phenomena, like emotions, are
material. Even if one did wish to reduce those to matter, there are other
things that cannot be so reduced. First among these is value, the
subject matter of ethics, aesthetics and more…

But
it’s still worth thinking with the premodern schemes to figure out those
vitally important pieces of reality that cannot be reduced to matter and its
movements. Science does not supersede them.

With
that in mind, I want to return to the importance of categories for Aristotle
and Rāmānuja. These two thinkers had a great deal in common. They each followed a thinker – Plato
and Śaṅkara respectively – who saw the
everyday world of particulars as something of a problem, something to ideally
be transcended in favour of a greater universal. Their own work tried to make
room for that material world, but in a way that remained close to their
predecessors. They were familiar with materialist worldviews – the Cārvākas, Democritus, Epicurus – but they understood the
need for an understanding of reality that went beyond he material, as Plato’s
and Śaṅkara’s had done. A comprehensive scheme of categories allowed them
to think the world – the whole world, not only matter.

I
want to argue that art works enjoy a sort of autonomy from both their makers
and audiences. We know little about the author of the Epic of Gilgamesh
or the creators of the French cave paintings, yet these things are still
nonetheless able to resonate and act in the world. There’s thus a way in
which, I think, works of art are in excess of all contexts (author’s intention,
historical setting, audience reception, etc); and it is because they are in
excess of context that they are able to endure throughout the ages. Works
of art are perpetually escaping all historical and hermeneutic horizons, all
regimes of attraction, and falling into new regimes of attraction modifying
them in all sorts of ways. They are examples of the Lucretian clinamen or
swerve and are inexhaustible in their ability to produce swerves. This is
what the historicists and hermeneuticians miss in their approach to art:
the excess of art over any and all historical context or horizon, the
constitutive being of art as clinamen.

This
excess over every horizon is possible because art is a material being. To
my knowledge, Deleuze and Guattari do the best job of emphasizing the being of
art as object or machine.

What
if we as a culture valued the cultivation of human virtues, intellectual,
moral, and spiritual, rather than promoting essentialized views of masculinity
and femininity that advance impoverished views both of males as brutes
controlled by mere instinctual drives and females as inherently inferior
rational creatures or mere objects existing for male sexual pleasure? Humans are
far too complex for these oversimplified, facile, generalizations, whose
supposed universal and “natural” properties are all-too-often the particular
and constructed script imposed by those possessing the economic, political, and
cultural “capital.”

So
where do we go from here? Perhaps we should at least begin by asking the
following questions: “What is freedom? How do our cultural, political, social,
and “personal” habits shape us, and what kind of people are these structures,
narratives, and personal choices shaping us to be?” Debate regarding the
current gun laws is, no doubt, needed and tragedies like Aurora highlight why such dialogue must take
place. However, we also need to interrogate the cultural narratives and
socially acceptable forms of “entertainment” shaping the hearts and minds of
Americans both young and old, as we engage in our mundane, so-called “normal”
activities.

These
actions invoke the worst images of Peshwa-era Pune, where tyrants enforced
archaic rules, which Vijay Tendulkar captured in his play, Ghashiram
Kotwal… Most men who should have stepped in to stop have turned their eyes
away, expressing their inability to do anything, leaving Draupadi to the mercy
of divine powers. And all that Krishna can do
is to keep adding yards to her never-ending sari, prolonging the humiliation.

There’s
a simpler solution: blindfold and restrain the men who can’t see women going
where they want to go, wearing what they want to wear, doing what they want to
do.

But
as change seeps into most parts of the country, something that is making women
break moulds, clashes are recurring with frightening regularity. Like other
cities that have outgrown their shoes, Guwahati too is showing signs of trouble
as it adjusts to this change.

Even
before Mother’s so-called ‘demise’ friends, advisors, brokers, et al, slipped
into the confidence of the Trustees adding to the yogic immaturity &
spiritual unfitness of their decisions on admission, expulsion, punishment,
etc. of ‘inmates’. The results of this association become obvious with even a
cursory study of the quality & quantity of the inmates admitted by them, –
the worst, in the opinion of one of Mother’s secretaries, being parasitical
retirees who have made SAAT’s Ashram their “haven of splendid soft repose”. Posted by General Editor at 7/19/2012 09:25:00 AM